Former England rugby captain and World Cup winner Phil Vickery is declared BANKRUPT as documents show he owes 'hundreds of thousands of pounds'

Former England rugby captain Phil Vickery has been made bankrupt with documents showing he owes £100,000 to a company which is in liquidation.

Mr Vickery, 48, of Bath, who was part of England’s triumphant 2003 World Cup winning side, applied to make himself bankrupt using debtor’s petition, last month.

His management consultancy Vix Limited is in liquidation and he owed the business £97,806. The company also owes HMRC £71,000 in VAT and PAYE and National Insurance payments.

The Office of the Adjudicator granted his request to be made bankrupt on February 21 and on or before that date he stood down from at least four businesses.

One source said he had amassed debts of ‘hundreds of thousands of pounds’ to a lot of contacts and the HMRC.

Documents filed by the Insolvency Service confirm he will remain bankrupt for 12 months until 21 February next year.

On the day the bankruptcy was made official he also stood down as a director of his business of Killock Limited, a management consultancy based in Cheltenham.

The company, set up 17 months ago, had not filed any accounts. He also quit as a director of No 3 Restaurants Limited on the same day and resigned board positions at Raging Bull Group Limited and Creed Food Service Limited in January this year.

Last year another consultancy business Spring Star Consulting was dissolved after less than two years and not filing any accounts.

Phil Vickery Holdings Limited was also closed in 2023 after three years and only filing dormant accounts.

Vickery was inducted into the Premiership Rugby Hall of Fame in 2015. He was a tight head prop who played in all seven of England’s 2003 World cup matches. He was made an MBE after the victory.

He also captained the team at the 2007 World Cup in France where England lost to South Africa in the final.

After leaving rugby, Vickery has lent his support to a number of charities, including The Pied Piper Appeal and Wooden Spoon.

He is an official ambassador to both the Prince’s Countryside Fund and the banking group RBS's RugbyForce scheme.

He is also a patron of The Country Food Trust Charity which produces food and donates it to people in need. In 2011, Vickery competed in the sixth series of Celebrity Masterchef and emerged as the winner.

In 2020, Vickery revealed he'd undergone an MRI scan to see if his years of rugby playing had caused lasting injury to his brain. 

Vickery currently is one of over 200 retired players now suing World Rugby over concussions they fear have left them with brain injury, alongside Mark Regan and with former Welsh poster-boy Gavin Henson.

Others including Steve Thompson, Alix Popham, Colin Charvis and Sean Lamont, were also named as claimants in the group action during a case management hearing last December. 

Proceedings in the planned Group Litigation Order against World Rugby, the RFU and Welsh Rugby Union are set to resume at the Royal Courts of Justice in April.

With Thompson and other claimants suffering severe post-career health problems such as early onset dementia, their lawyer Susan Rodway, from Rylands Garth law firm, submitted in court that the defendants ‘ought to have known the long-term neurological complications’.

In a statement, World Rugby said: ‘Legal action prevents us reaching out to support the players involved, many of whom are named publicly for the first time today. But we want them to know that we care deeply about their struggles, that we are listening and that they are members of the rugby family. 

'The court’s ruling for the second time that the claimants’ solicitors must provide information previously asked for is a positive step. Player welfare is rugby’s top priority.’

Meanwhile, as they faced up to the threat of costly legal action against them, the RFU published up-beat results for the 2022-23 financial year, with ‘significantly higher’ revenues of £221.4million – up from £189.1m the previous year.